legs to welcome him, he turned away. She lay frozen, unable to move or think or understand why he reached for the jeans he’d just discarded. She whipped her arms down and pushed up on one elbow. She was all set to torch him like one of the commercial high-pressure propane flamethrowers her fire protection troops used when he faced her again, a crumpled foil packet in his hand.
“I have no idea how long I’ve carried this in my wallet,” he said with a wry grimace. “A year maybe.”
Which implied, she thought on a surge of primal satisfaction, he hadn’t delved into his secret stash for prissy missy Alicia Johnson.
She dismissed as totally irrelevant the possibility that Alicia might have supplied the necessary protective measures herself. The only thing that mattered to her now was that Gabe, her Gabe, apparently hadn’t initiated a sexual encounter.
Until now.
“Let me.”
Her heart stuck in her throat, she rolled onto her knees and held out her hand. She squeezed every ounce of pleasure she could out of tearing open the packet and sheathing his now rigid erection. The veined shaft rising hard and pulsing from its nest of wiry chestnut hair triggered atavistic instincts as old as time. This was her mate. The man she’d given her heart to years before she gave him her virginity.
She’d never looked at another man during their years together. Never wanted another man’s hands on her. At least, not until the hurt and the loneliness had got too much to bear. Even then, she’d taken only one other man to her bed.
The experience had left her so empty, so heartbroken that she’d never repeated it. But word had gotten back to Gabe. How, she never knew, not that it mattered. His raw fury had leaped from the email he’d sent asking if it was true.
The anger still simmered, she discovered. Not as raw. Not as livid. But she could see it in his eyes when he tunneled his hands through her hair and tipped her head back.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about you doing this with someone else?” he asked, his voice low and rough.
“I can guess.”
“That damned near killed me, Suze.”
“I know,” she said, her throat tight. “I was sorry then. I’m sorry now.”
The reply did little to take the edge off his hostility. He toppled her back, splaying her on the sage-green spread, then followed her down. His body was rock hard, his muscles taut and his tendons corded as he kneed her legs apart.
She welcomed him, craving a cleansing as much as he did. Yet for all his seeming anger, he took time to make sure she was primed. His fingers found all the triggers. Started the pinwheels spinning and the juices flowing.
She didn’t have to tell him that she was wet and ready. He knew her body’s responses as well as she did. Better. She was panting when he positioned himself between her thighs. Groaning when she lifted her hips and rose up to meet his thrusts. She ground her mouth against his, more than matching his savage hunger.
Her climax slammed into her with almost zero warning. One moment she was straining against his hips. The next, she arched her spine, groaned deep in her throat and exploded.
She had no idea how long she drifted on those dark, undulating waves of pleasure before she realized he was still rock hard and buried inside her. When she pried her eyes open, the worry in his green-brown eyes melted her heart.
“You okay?”
The question was as tight and strained as his body. Swish slicked her palms over his taut shoulders. “More okay than I’ve been in three years.”
The reply didn’t seem to reassure him. Still frowning, he propped himself up on his elbows and framed her face with his palms. “I didn’t mean to be so rough.”
“Do you hear me complaining?”
“No, but...”
“We need to get that old hurt out of our systems, Gabe. We’re halfway there.”
“Halfway?”
“Yep.”
She gave the muscles low in her belly a tight, hard squeeze. A flush rushed into Gabe’s cheeks, and she squeezed again. Reveling in his response, she rolled onto her hip, then up to her knees.
“All right, fella. My turn to get rough.”
* * *
By the time they finished, Gabe felt drained of all bodily fluids and Suze lay across his chest like a bag of bones. When he eased her to the side to cradle her in the crook of his arm, she nuzzled her nose into his neck.
“Gimme a few minutes,” she grunted. “Then I’ll get up ‘n’ make you that omelet.”
“No hurry. I’m good.”
Christ! As if that bland adjective came anywhere close to describing how he felt at that moment.
“Okay,” she muttered against his throat. “I was up all night last night. I’ll just snuggle here for a little bit.”
Snuggle forever.
Gabe caught the suggestion before it slipped out. But the words hung there in his mind as she dropped into a light doze. Not five minutes later, she was out like a brick.
That was fine with him. He wasn’t on a tight schedule. School was over for the year, he wouldn’t start coaching summer tennis clinics for another week and his deputy mayor could handle any minor crises that might erupt. He could lie here as long as he wanted, his wife sleeping beside him, her breath warm on his neck and the overhead fan gently stirring the ends of her hair.
He teased the loose strands with an absent, hazy concentration. They slid through his fingers, still wind-whipped but not dry or dusty. As he twisted a skein around his thumb, his thoughts segued from the familiar feel of her hair to what their unexpected encounter might mean in terms of their future.
Grimacing, he reinforced his silent decision to end things with Alicia. She’d still been stinging from her own divorce when she’d turned to Gabe for companionship. Somehow their casual encounters had morphed into dates, then to an “understanding” that Alicia had begun to take more seriously than Gabe did. She’d been pushing for them to move in together. Her place or his, she didn’t care, and he’d been edging close to saying what the hell.
Now...
He scrunched a few inches to the left so he could look down at his wife’s face without going cross-eyed. He always got a kick out of watching her sleep. Those ridiculously thick lashes fanned her cheeks. Her breath soughed in and out through half-open lips. And every once in a while her nose would twitch and she’d make little snuffling noises.
God, he loved this woman! She’d been in his blood, in his heart, for almost as long as he could remember. Maybe now they could put all the hurt and separation and loneliness behind them. Maybe their chance meeting at that deserted intersection wasn’t chance at all, but a...
The sudden, shrill notes of a xylophone clanged through the quiet. Gabe jerked
